Technical Field
The instant disclosure generally relates to airborne communications and, in particular, to a hybrid communications system in which data requested by a mobile in a particular vehicle is cached on a plurality vehicles including the particular vehicle.
Background
Some existing airlines and other transportation companies provide services, such as Wi-Fi or other data delivery services, to a device that is on-board a vehicle while the vehicle is traveling en route to a destination. The on-board device may be, for example, a device that is fixedly connected to the vehicle (e.g., a device that is included in a Line Replaceable Unit (LRU) on an aircraft), or the on-board device may be a mobile computing device such as a smart phone, tablet or laptop computing device that is temporarily being transported by the vehicle. To establish communications for services to such on-board devices, providers often utilize a wireless communication link such as a direct Air-to-Ground (ATG) link or a satellite link over which communications or data is delivered to and from the vehicle. The wireless communication link is typically a bi-directional communication link over which all forward data (i.e., data delivered to the vehicle) and all reverse data (i.e., data sent from the vehicle) is transmitted and received.
In certain circumstances, the bi-directional communication link on which an on-board data service depends can be unavailable (e.g., when the vehicle travels to a location that is outside of network coverage), slow or busy (e.g., with a queue of pending upload requests), or malfunctioning, thus rendering the on-board data services unavailable to or unusable by the devices. Further, because all communications for the set of devices that are on-board a vehicle typically traverse the same bi-directional link, the download or upload behavior of certain data content types, data files, etc. can appear inconsistent to users of the service. For example, messages or communications sent by a device might appear to have zero latency while the arrival of requested content at the device appears to be significantly delayed.